perfidious: <Peligroso Patzer: ....Dortmund....included a significant number of local tourists whose playing strength is a notch below the world elite.>

In my opinion, the characterisation as 'local tourists' is over the top-the players at the bottom of the scoretable are far from weak and would beat the spots off 'mere' 2500 players if one were, for example, to organise Dortmund on the lines of those ~2650 players and six-seven 2500s to flesh out the field. Of course the players you mention aren't quite in the leading group of world rankings, but how would anyone raise their game if not given a chance to play stronger opposition?

Eyal: <Super-tournament> is clearly a fuzzy category – the term doesn't have any "official" definition, it's evaluatively loaded, and it depends very much on personal tastes and preferences. For example, how much weight exactly does one place on the rating average of the participants, and what should be the minimum of such average to justify the use of the term? How many players of the top 5/10/20 etc. are required, or what percentage of such players out of the total (and what exactly, in this context, is the status of certain "big names" that are currently lower in the ratings than they were at their peak or, alternatively, of certain rising talents whose rating is still not so high)? Or, from the other direction, how many "weak" players are allowed and how should they be defined? For some people the tradition of the tournament in question might also play a part. Thus, any attempt at an "exact" definition of what a super-tournament is might sound right to some people, but probably also arbitrary or unconvincing to many others.

All this doesn't mean that the use of the term is completely arbitrary, of course – I think pretty much everybody will agree that the Tal Memorial was a super-tournament and that the Dutch championship (which has just ended) wasn't; but Dortmund is more of a borderline-case.

SetNoEscapeOn: At least Sonas' concept of "tournament class" has a clear definition:

< I developed a formula which I am now calling the tournament "class". You look at the top ten on the rating list, at the time the tournament started, and see who is participating in the tournament. Having the #1 player earns the tournament 4 points, and having the #2 tournament earns it another 4 points. For #3 and #4, it's only 3 points per player. For #5 and #6, it's 2 points, and for #7, #8, #9, and #10, it's 1 point each. So if you just had the #1, #3, and #9 players in your tournament, the tournament would be a class 8 (that's 4+3+1). If a tournament had all ten from the top list (and possibly more) then it would get the theoretical maximum class of 22>

Using the current live rating list, this was a class 6 tournament. In contrast, Tal Memorial was class 16.

fisayo123: <Using the current live rating list, this was a class 6 tournament. In contrast, Tal Memorial was class 16.>
Give it up already. The recognized way of calculating tournament strength is Cat's. Have some respect for the participants that played here. <Eyal> has already settled this needless argument with his succinct input. Again congrats to Karjakin and Caruana as the new guard gradually replaces the old guard in tournaments <2012>

perfidious: The Sonas concept has one readily apparent flaw: if we have a six-player double round-robin with nrs 1, 3 and 9 and the rest outside the top ten, but all 2700+, that scores eight points. On the other hand, if we were to have a single round-robin with twelve players, which included the three players above, along with another member of the top ten, then threw in say, eight ~2500 players, this event scores higher on the Sonas scale (if I understand correctly), yet is clearly weaker than the former tournament.

Yes, it certainly is not perfect. And Sonas' purpose was to But the nature of your scenario is unlikely enough that it seems more like an example of an exception rather than a description of a flaw.

<Of course the players you mention aren't quite in the leading group of world rankings, but how would anyone raise their game if not given a chance to play stronger opposition?>

It's true. And there's been a curious trend in world chess over the past 20 years: as more and more people around the entire world play chess and the number of strong grandmasters increases, the more restrictive it's getting at the top. Fewer tournaments, smaller fields.

perfidious: <SetNoEscapeOn> We agree that it's less likely than ever that the tourney field I set out would come to pass; it was merely to point up the absurdity of Sonas' neatly packaging this and selling us a bill of goods.

The TPRs show that the rest of the field basically fed off Bartel and Gustaffson. I'm really not sure about this new format. It's well and good to give the locals a chance, but do the local fans really want to see some of their top players butchered like this?

Eyal: Bartel isn't a "local", btw, he's a Polish player who qualified fair and square through winning Aeroflot - as Nepo, Bacrot, or Le qualified before him in recent years. Regarding the German players - I certainly wouldn't have minded seeing some +2700 players instead of Naiditch's compatriots, but it's really only Gustafsson who had a terrible performance. Meier's was quite respectable and Fridman did pretty much what he was expected to according to his rating.

waustad: If you want a slugfest, look at early rounds of Swisses. Actually they are often more like a massacre because large rating differences are common. High level RRs have often had a large number of draws, unless you want to go back to the 19th century. Women's events often have a higher percentage of decisive games too.

Peligroso Patzer: <perfidious: <Peligroso Patzer: ....Dortmund....included a significant number of local tourists whose playing strength is a notch below the world elite.>

In my opinion, the characterisation as 'local tourists' is over the top *** >

The connotations of the word “tourist” are inherently ambiguous. Perhaps you construed it differently from what I intended.

Please note that I described those players as being of a “playing strength *** a notch [i.e., not very much] below the world elite”, so I did not intend to insult them, only note that they are not in the world top 10, 20, or 25. The number of players in that category (not world top 25) was clearly <significant> (half the field, since it would include Naiditsch [up to world #35 from #44 on the live list after this event], even though he once (2005) took clear first in this tourney when the remainder of the field were mostly in the world elite).

Peligroso Patzer: <Eyal: Bartel isn't a "local", btw, he's a Polish player who qualified fair and square through winning Aeroflot - as Nepo, Bacrot, or Le qualified before him in recent years.***>

Good point. I may have got a bit carried away by the appeal of the oxymoronic resonance of "local tourist". Probably I should have resisted the temptation to use it, but, in general, I can resisit anything but temptation. Mea culpa.

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